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The Ford Motor Company announced a two-phased approach to integrating Amazon Alexa into its 2017 line of vehicles.

The first gives electric Ford vehicle owners the ability to connect to their cars from the comfort of their homes through Alexa devices such as the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, and Amazon Tap.The second phase, which starts this spring, enables Ford drivers with SYNC 3 AppLink to ask Alexa to search and transfer destinations to navigation, resume audiobooks, request news, add items to Amazon shopping list, and more—all from their car.

The 2017 model will incorporate the Alexa Voice Service, allowing users to plan an entire dinner party, grocery shop, and more just by using their voice. Users will be able to search recipes, add any ingredients they’re missing to a shopping list, place orders from Amazon.com, and even control smart home products by enabling Alexa skills.

The kitchen is often one of the busiest rooms in the house. With Alexa, Smart InstaView Door-in-Door refrigerator owners can manage their entire homes without lifting a finger.

Learn more about the Alexa integration and product availability by visiting LG’s press page.

Get Started with Alexa

Alexa is always getting smarter with new capabilities and services. Learn how AVS can add rich, voice-powered experiences to your connected products.

Have questions? We’re here to help. Visit us on the AVS Forum or Alexa GitHub to speak with one of our experts.

To demonstrate how a voice-forward interface like Amazon Alexa enables frictionless, hands-free control over everything in the home, from the lock on the front door and lights in the hallway to advanced scenes for movie nights and cozy mornings, we’ve collaborated with Intel to showcase a Smart Tiny Home with Alexa at CES.

DISH announced yesterday at CES that customers will soon be able to watch hands-free, voice-controlled TV by pairing a Hopper DVR with the Amazon Echo or Echo Dot.

DISH will introduce a new Alexa skill in the first half of 2017 that allows customers to navigate, search, and quick play TV on a Hopper DVR based on channel, title, actor, and genre just by using their voice.

Voice is one of the most natural ways we can control and interact with the technology we use every day. From the kitchen to the beach, customers have told us that they love the ability to simply ask Alexa to stream their favorite songs, check weather and news reports, and access thousands of Alexa skills.

Today we’re excited to announce the Alexa Fund has added Vesper, developer of the world’s most advanced acoustic sensors, to the Alexa family by contributing to its Series A funding. The $15 million round was led by Boston-based venture capital firm Accomplice, and also includes investment support from Hyperlane, Miraenano Tech, and other undisclosed investors.

Vesper’s MEMS microphones use a patented piezoelectric design to prevent dust, water, solder flux vapors, and more from impacting performance, presenting a unique opportunity for manufacturers to build products for a variety of environments and use cases. Vesper’s latest product, VM1010, is the only wake-on-sound MEMS microphone on the market, introducing the possibility of always-listening devices at next-to-zero power draw.

According to Marwan Boustany, senior technology analyst, MEMS and Sensors, at IHS Markit, “MEMS microphones are growing so quickly because voice interaction is becoming ubiquitous. Microphones such as Vesper’s, which improve ruggedness and performance and support well-matched microphone arrays, may well accelerate many more use cases where voice is the standard user interface.”

As part of its commitment to invest up to $100 million in companies fueling voice technology innovation, the Alexa Fund is constantly looking for startups enabling new and exciting voice-activated capabilities for their customers. Vesper’s technology opens the door to adding Alexa to new device types, such as portable electronics where environmental resistance is an important attribute or where in-home devices require far-field applications for truly hands-free experiences.

Are you the next Alexa Fund business?

The Alexa Fund builds on Amazon’s track record of helping innovative individuals grow ideas into successful products and businesses. Amazon helps accelerate ideas by offering unique benefits to development teams, such as early access to Alexa capabilities and enhanced marketing support across channels.

We’re excited to announce the Conexant AudioSmart™ 2-Mic Development Kit for Amazon AVS, a commercial-grade reference solution that streamlines the design and implementation of audio front end systems. This solution works with our updated Java sample client for Raspberry Pi, which also includes music certification enhancements. This kit features Conexant’s AudioSmart™ CX20921 Voice Input Processor with a dual microphone board and Sensory’s TrulyHandsfree™ wake word engine tuned to “Alexa”.

The home is rapidly evolving thanks to the proliferation of connected devices and advancements in voice recognition technology. Together, new smart home products and voice control services are giving customers greater control over their homes.

Amazon and Intel see a tremendous opportunity to bring the benefits of a personal voice experience to millions of new consumers and are collaborating to encourage developers and device manufacturers to extend natural voice interaction to more products via Amazon Alexa.

The collaboration will enable partners to build new devices with Alexa using an Intel-based smart speaker form factor reference design coming in Q1 2017, as well as make it easier to create skills that work with the Intel-based Smart Home Hub.

Enabling Product Development with Intel and Amazon Alexa

Intel is working with Amazon to deliver smart speaker form factor reference designs (FFRD) with Alexa that make it easier for device manufacturers to build products with high-performance, far-field voice interaction. The first FFRD will be available starting in Q1 2017 and will offer device makers:

Accelerated development of Alexa voice-enabled smart speakers on Intel architecture.

Voice as the primary interface, allowing Alexa skills developers to build capabilities that reach even more end users.

Requisite speakers and microphone arrays expected from smart speakers, as well as the home radios that support the standards needed for PAN connectivity in the home, including Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Bluetooth, and is extensible enough to add video capabilities and environment sensors for an all-in-one customer experience.

An SDK that enables developers to add voice and video capabilities to connected products.

The FFRD combines Intel’s platform technology advancements with Amazon’s ever-smarter Alexa Voice Service to accelerate innovation among device manufacturers and the developers building new skills for all Alexa-enabled products.

We are excited to announce a new addition to the Alexa family—JAM Voice.

JAM Voice is a portable speaker system with Alexa that serves as a complete hub for music and information. It’s a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-connected speaker that features touch-activated integration with the Alexa Voice Service (AVS), giving customers the ability to push a button and just ask Alexa to play music, check the weather, get the news, or even order a pizza.

Whether entertaining a group of friends or relaxing after work, the JAM Voice system can play music from one or many rooms in the house. You can pair multiple speakers when connected to Wi-Fi, streaming music from Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn just by asking Alexa. The Alexa integration also makes it easy for customers to access thousands of third-party skills, built using the Alexa Skills Kit, including smart home controls through Philips Hue, Belkin Wemo, SmartThings, Insteon, and Wink.

Getting Started with AVS

Alexa is always getting smarter with new capabilities and services through machine learning. Your product also gains access to new capabilities with Alexa through API updates, feature launches, and custom skills. Learn how AVS can add rich voice-powered experiences to your connected products, and read how some of our partners below have integrated with Alexa already:

Consumers want greater control over their homes—the ability to manage not only smart products like their lights and thermostats, but also the services that provide them with connectivity and original content. For service providers, this means tapping into a network that empowers customers with a growing number of capabilities and products built for managing the entire home through voice.

Today, Technicolor and Amazon announced a new collaboration that brings Amazon Web Services and Amazon Alexa together with next generation home gateways from Technicolor that will allow service providers to develop new services for connected homes faster than ever.

Technicolor is a leader in digital innovation for the media and entertainment industry that works with cable, telco and satellite operators to bring bandwidth-intensive experiences into the home. The company sees opportunities for network service providers to build a bridge between cloud and edge technology to introduce new revenue-generating services while making home networks easier to access, manage and configure through voice activated commands.

Technicolor will use AWS for home gateway applications, leverage AWS IoT and Greengrass, integrate Alexa into its new gateway products to allow users to configure network settings and more just by asking, and incorporate Amazon’s Alpine System-on-chip into its new family of gateway products.

What this Means for Network Service Providers and Consumers

The collaboration has clear benefits for both service providers and consumers: NSPs will gain access to a broad developer community through AWS that’s constantly building new applications for the home, improving overall quality of service, customer experience, cost control, while addressing privacy issues by empowering consumers to have greater control over their own information. For consumers, Technicolor’s new services and gateway products will offer the ability to live and interact with connected home services in an easy and natural manner—through voice. This in turn will drive demand for new, more meaningful applications, incentivizing developers to continue to push the bar when working with NSPs.

We’re excited to introduce “Powered by Linkplay,” a turn-key audio solution that comes with an Alexa Voice Service (AVS) integration. With “Powered by Linkplay,” OEMs now have a quick and cost-effective way to launch Wi-Fi speaker products with Amazon Alexa.

The built-in Alexa experience allows customers to ask Alexa for weather reports, traffic updates, Flash Briefings, and to play their favorite music. Linkplay also gives manufacturers the ability to offer end users access to a range of streaming music providers, including Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Spotify, TIDAL, Napster, and more. Best of all, “Powered by Linkplay” makes it easy to pair multiple speakers together to play music throughout the home.

OEMs that use the Linkplay audio solution to power their speaker products also gain access to thousands of Alexa skills, new features and capabilities through regular AVS API updates, and smart home controls with partners such as Philips Hue, Belkin Wemo, SmartThings, Insteon, and Wink.

Here are a few products that use the new “Powered by Linkplay” solution:

Getting Started with AVS

Not a speaker manufacturer? Alexa is always getting smarter with new capabilities and services. Learn how AVS can add rich voice-powered experiences to your connected products, and read how some of our partners below have integrated with Alexa already:

People love that they can dim their lights, turn up the heat, and more just by asking Alexa on their Amazon Echo. Now Belkin Wemo has launched new capabilities through the existing Alexa Voice Service (AVS) API, making the same smart home voice controls accessible on the Echo available on all third-party products with Alexa. Best of all, your customers can enable the Wemo skill on your device today—no additional development work needed.

Because Alexa is cloud-based, it’s always getting smarter with new capabilities, services, and a growing library of third-party skills from the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK). As an AVS developer, your product gains access to these growing capabilities through regular API updates, feature launches, and custom skills built by our active developer community.

More About Wemo

Belkin makes a variety of high-quality Wemo switches that consumers use to control a number of devices in the home, from floor lamps and ceiling bulbs to fans and home audio speakers. The switches are perfect for beginners and early adopters alike, and now with third-party integration across the family of Amazon and third-party devices with Alexa, your users can have even greater control of their smart homes without lifting a finger. Read more about how Wemo is building a smart ecosystem of connected devices for the home.

Belkin Wemo joins other Amazon Alexa Smart Home partners, such as Philips Hue SmartThings, Insteon, and Wink, in enabling voice control in third-party devices with Alexa.

People love that they can dim their lights, turn up the heat, and more just by asking Alexa on their Amazon Echo. Now Philips Hue has launched a new cloud-based Alexa skill, making the same smart home voice controls accessible on the Echo available on all Alexa-enabled third-party products through the Alexa Voice Service API. Best of all, your customers can enable the new Hue skill today—no additional development work needed.

Because Alexa is cloud-based, it’s always getting smarter with new capabilities, services, and a growing library of third-party skills from the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK). As an AVS developer, your Alexa-enabled product gains access to these growing capabilities through regular API updates, feature launches, and custom skills built by our active developer community.

Now with Philips Hue capabilities, your end users can voice control all their favorite smart home devices just by asking your Alexa-enabled product. You can test the new Philips Hue skill for yourself by building your own Amazon Alexa prototype and trying these sample utterances:

Alexa, turn on the kitchen light.

Alexa, dim the living room lights to 20%.

End users can enable the new Philips Hue skill in the “Smart Home” section on the Amazon Alexa app.

More About Philips Hue

Philips Hue offers customizable, wireless LED lighting that can be controlled by voice across the family of Amazon Alexa products. Now with third-party integration, your users will be able to turn on and off their lights, change lighting color, and more from any room in the house just by asking your Alexa-enabled third-party product. The new Philips Hue skill also includes support for Scenes, allowing Alexa customers to voice control Philips Hue devices assigned to various rooms in the house.

Whether end users have an Echo in the kitchen or an Alexa-enabled product in the living room, they can now voice control Philips Hue products from more Alexa-enabled devices across their home. Learn more about the Smart Home Skill API and how to build your own smart home skill.

What makes the Amazon Echo so appealing is the fact that customers can control smart home devices, access news and weather reports, stream music, and even hear a few jokes just by asking Alexa. It’s simple and intuitive.

We’re excited to announce an important Alexa Voice Service (AVS) API update that now enables you to build voice-activated products that respond to the “Alexa” wake word. The update includes new hands-free speech recognition capabilities and a “cloud endpointing” feature that automatically detects end-of-user speech in the cloud. Best of all, these capabilities are available through the existing v20160207 API—no upgrades needed.

Get Started with Our New Raspberry Pi Project

To help you get started quickly, we are releasing a new hands-free Raspberry Pi prototyping project with third-party wake word engines from Sensory and KITT.AI. Build your own wake word enabled, Amazon Alexa prototype in under an hour by visiting the Alexa GitHub.

And don’t forget to share your finished projects on Twitter using #avsDevs. AVS Evangelist Amit Jotwani and team will be highlighting our favorite projects, as well as publishing featured developer interviews, on the Alexa Blog. You can find Amit on Twitter here: @amit.

Learn more about the Alexa Voice Service, its features, and design use cases. See below for more information on Alexa and the growing family of Alexa-enabled products and services:

Last month, we announced the launch of Nucleus, the smart home intercom that’s always getting smarter with Alexa. Designed to bring families closer together, Nucleus makes two-way video conferencing between rooms, homes, and mobile devices instantaneous. Following the successful launch of Nucleus on Amazon.com and in hundreds of Lowe’s home improvement stores throughout the US, we’re excited to announce that Alexa Fund has led a $5.6 million Series A investment round in Nucleus, with additional participation from BoxGroup, Greylock Partners, FF Angel (Founders Fund), Foxconn, and SV Angel.

“It’s incredible to receive this level of support in such a short period of time,” said Jonathan Frankel, co-founder and CEO of Nucleus. “It speaks to the importance of our shared vision: Bringing families closer together through intuitive and intelligent interfaces. Amazon has been a stand-out supporter since day one and recognizes the value Nucleus is bringing to families nationwide, and the rapid market traction we’re seeing within our growing community.”

The Alexa Fund provides up to $100 million in venture capital funding to fuel voice technology innovation. We believe experiences designed around the human voice are a more natural way for people to interface with technology. Nucleus combines ease-of-use and the Alexa Voice Service (AVS) to create an intuitive voice experience where customers can stream music, access custom Alexa skills, and more just by asking Alexa. Nucleus joins past Alexa Fund recipients Luma, Sutro, Invoxia, Musaic, Rachio, Scout Alarm, Garageio, Toymail, Dragon Innovation, MARA, Mojio, TrackR, KITT.AI, DefinedCrowd, and Ring.

Nucleus is the first touchscreen device to incorporate AVS, making it easy for customers to stream music, control smart home products such as SmartThings, Insteon and Wink, and access the library of 3,000 Alexa skills. Read more about how Nucleus and the Alexa Voice Service (AVS) worked together to bring the company’s smart video intercom system to life in this morning’s featured developer spotlight interview.

Nucleus is available for purchase on Amazon.com. Build your own skill for Alexa and the growing family of Alexa-enabled devices with the Alexa Skills Kit.

In early 2014, Jonathan Frankel started renovating a house in Philadelphia. With three kids and multiple floors, he wanted an intercom system, but was frustrated with the persistence of old technology. He found that home intercoms hadn’t changed much in the last 30 years; they were still expensive and difficult to install. What’s more, intercom systems had failed to keep up with today’s modern families who are spread across geographies and constantly on the move.

Frankel, now CEO of Nucleus, wanted to bring families closer together. He wanted to build a device that could bridge generations and let his mom video chat with his children with a simple touch. He wanted to visit with his family over dinner, even while away on business. Whenever, whoever, and wherever they may be, he wanted to talk to them—room-to-room, home-to-home, or mobile-to-home.

Now his vision has come to life. Nucleus, the first smart home intercom with video calling, and with the voice capabilities of Alexa, is delighting customers with easy access to music, news, weather, to-do lists, and even smart home controls.

An innovative product made even better with voice

Amazon created the Alexa Voice Service (AVS) to make it easier for developers to add voice-powered experiences to their products and services. That proved advantageous for Nucleus.

According to Isaac Levy, chief technology officer at Nucleus, hands-free interaction was part of the Nucleus vision from the beginning. They prototyped early Nucleus units with various voice recognition solutions, including open source. When they heard about the commercial availability of AVS, they knew their search was over.

“We knew right away that AVS would be a great fit, and we wanted to incorporate it into our product,” Levy said. “It’s one thing to have basic voice recognition. But being able to unlock everything Alexa can do—weather, sports, flash briefings, all those custom skills…it’s like waking up a genie in our device. AVS helped Nucleus create an even more compelling customer experience.”

Levy says AVS allowed his team to develop a more full-featured Nucleus with capabilities the company hadn’t developed on its own. For example, natural language understanding (NLU) is built into the Alexa service, providing developers with an intelligent and intuitive voice interface that’s always getting smarter. This saved Nucleus many years of development work.